Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 2005-131231 (Patent Document 1), 2005-158050 (Patent Document 2), 2002-56293 (Patent Document 3), and 2002-263373 (Patent Document 4) enclose techniques for distributing advertisements utilizing the Internet. The technique disclosed in the Patent Document 1 is an online game system capable of providing not only benefits within a game, but also real-world benefits such as coupons from a sponsor company, and also capable of advertising and marketing for the sponsor company while minimizing deviation from a game story in order to maintain interest and sense of achievement of players, wherein the game advances while one or more of advertisement, marketing or coupon services are selected in scenes that have minimal deviation from the game story. Thus sales may be effectively promoted while minimizing unpleasant experiences of the players. Also the players may enjoy the benefits of the coupons redeemable for actual products from the sponsor company as well as enjoying the sense of achievement in the game.
The technique disclosed in the Patent Document 2 is a method for delivering advertisements using a game, and which is capable of correctly estimating effectiveness of the advertisements, wherein the game includes items each associated with a product or a company, and wherein a cellular phone downloads software of the game from a content distribution server and stores a total number of runs of the downloaded software and a total runtime. The cellular phone uploads the total number of runs and the total runtime to an aggregation server with a predetermined timing. The aggregation server summarizes the total number of runs and the total runtime sent from the cellular phone.
The technique disclosed in the Patent Document 3 is a system comprising a mechanism for providing online advertisements for as many users as possible to view and also facilitating as many users as possible to click on the advertisements to access the advertisers' websites, wherein the system is capable of performing a process for growing an electronic character while downloading required information from other computers through a network; instructing the character to perform various actions depending on a user operation during the character growth process; and displaying the advertisements of a company or the like at the scene of the actions to thereby make the user view the advertisements in the course of enjoying the character growth in a game-like manner.
The technique disclosed in the Patent Document 4 is a method for effectively advertising using the Internet, wherein the method comprises the steps of opening, on the Internet, a game site comprising a plurality of pages sponsored by at least one company or organization; allowing users to log on to the game site via an Internet terminal and participate in a game; wherein the sponsor company is publicized and/or advertised in at least one of the pages deployed in the course of the game story.
Although the technique of the Patent Document 1 allows players to view the advertisement of the sponsor company by playing the game and to receive marketing information with the real-world benefits such as coupons, it cannot determine whether or not the players actually view the advertisement and fails to maximize the advertisement effectiveness.
Also this technique has the problem that the players lose their interest with monotonous task of receiving coupons or points according to the game advancement.
The technique of the Patent Document 2 makes an estimate on the advertisement effectiveness based on the total number of runs and the total runtime, which do not necessarily indicate the advertisement effectiveness, and therefore, the accuracy of its estimate is insufficient.
In addition, although the technique has a function for receiving comments on the contents, it has a problem that it may not collect enough questionnaire responses to its full effect without a mechanism for offering users an incentive to complete a tedious task of answering a questionnaire.
The techniques of the Patent Documents 3 and 4 display the advertisements of the sponsor company or the like, but cannot determine whether or not the advertisements are actually viewed to achieve their full effectiveness, and also cannot easily advertise for people not interested in games.
In view of the above, the purpose of the present invention is to overcome the aforementioned problems and provide a system, a method and a program for delivering advertisements capable of effectively advertising companies or products to users through a game as well as attracting the users' interest by varying the game difficulty in realtime according to user responses.